Lots of things are easy to sign up for. Lots of things are also not so easy to quit. With the new “click-to-cancel” rule implemented by the US Federal Trade Commission, that’s about to change. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gets about 70 complaints a day about charges for subscriptions that are hard to cancel,…
Dear medical office: I’d like to thank you for sending me a survey about my recent experience at your medical office. You are extremely consistent. Every time I visit a doctor or interact with anyone at your office or any other, I get a survey. I’m sure you’re using those surveys to learn ways you…
Customer service usually sucks. That’s not news. So I reserve my commentary for companies that manage to screw up in more interesting ways. That’s what Lowe’s just did. It not only failed, it failed 13 different times in one transaction. And it’s worth reviewing, since nearly all of those failures are due to the same…
You can use customer contact information to request feedback, or collect text for posting in an online review. But doing both in the same question, like so many “efficient” strategies, is bound to backfire. A disclaimer that undermines trust I recently worked with a title company to manage the purchase of a new home. Home…
Customer experience surveys shouldn’t give me a choice between whacking hard-working staff and approving corrupt and busted systems. Let me tell you what’s wrong with your systems, not your people. It’s nearly always the systems that are at fault for problems If there’s one thing I learned from the brilliant Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine,…
My internet service went down Sunday night. Verizon’s messages about the outage seemed to emanate from a twilight zone where time and reality have no meaning. I’m a Verizon FiOS customer. FiOS is extremely reliable — it’s never gone down in over five years. That’s good, because my business, my family’s work, and all my…
When I worked closely with Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, the authors of the customer experience book Outside In, I learned how most customer experience problems are rooted deep within corporate systems. That’s what happened to me this week in an interaction with AT&T. The odyssey of dropping a line from AT&T My son, a…
Have you been good to your customers? They will stand by you now. Have you been mean? Then don’t be surprised when they desert you in your time of need. That’s the schmuck deficit. Payback is a bitch. Many of the companies, large and small, that I deal with regularly are hurting right now. I’m…
I bought a Tesla. The experience of buying it was terrible. Analyzing the reasons for this is a great exercise in thinking through customer experience. This is not my first electric car. I’m a believer. Six years ago, I bought a Nissan Leaf. My family has been very happy with it. The maintenance costs are…